I was listening to NPR today on my way back from class, and something struck me. I got out of my car to pull the bum from under my tires, but while I was doing that, something on the radio caught my attention - specifically, the bickering over lucritive post-war reconstruction contracts.

I was really suprised that the US is being so overt in exposing the reason for war. First, we have the reconstruction itself. The United States has been very explicit in saying that they don't believe that the contracts should go to anyone who did not participate in the destruction in the first place. They've decided that the government of Iraq, and the people of Iraq, shouldn't even be able to choose the lowest bidder in the eventuality that such a government even exists beyond a nominal US puppet leader. Essentially, the US has now invaded Iraq, and before they've even finished levelling the country, told them out and out that they are then going to rob them blind. Realize that, even if you justify the war in general as one for liberation, this is essentially like a policeman you didn't call coming to your house, expelling an abusive husband and breaking a window in the process, then getting his friend to replace the window at double the market cost. Regardless of what justification you lend to the initial act, the unnecessary profiteering from the act is abominable. On top of this, though, the US is also, card blanche, invalidating any contracts Iraq held with any other nation - notably France, Russia and China. This is also without Iraq's consent, or even before Iraq has a government elected to give at least their nominal assent. At least with Afghanistan, we installed our boy and kept up a useful pretense of democracy.

"But," I hear you say, "Iraqi people will now control their own oil fields, so they can pay off these war debts pretty easily, right?" Oh, didn't we mention? The war (WHICH WASN'T FOR OIL! REALLY!) also nullifies any claim anyone else has on Iraqi resources. That includes, by the way, the claim of the Iraqi people over their own territory. Apparently, silly things like eminent domain and freedom over their own country are not important in the liberation of Iraq. In fact, it seems like the only freedom they do have is the freedom to wave little American flags for Fox News cameras embedded with military units in the gulf.

It's so overt. Everyone with half a brain who opposed the war brought up the fact that the war was over economics, over resources and over control in the region. It's just funny how predictable it was. At least during the cold war, we played like such actions were for the safety of our own people. We really are in a new age when the government can overtly spend hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to let corporate sponsors profit from death, and nobody even really cares. Well, nobody except the fundimentalist groups who are going to retaliate against the US - but there are no suicide bombers in Kennebunkport. Anyone with a complexion darker than ivory would be arrested and thrown out before he got anywhere near the oligarchy, unless he was dressed in the proper attire. Ugh.